


Love Builds A Garden

by The_Kingmaker



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 13:45:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17623502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Kingmaker/pseuds/The_Kingmaker
Summary: 'Gardens are important to hobbits. They are what makes a place home.’





	Love Builds A Garden

**Author's Note:**

> For Mim <3

Bilbo dug his fingers into the earth, letting the dark soil cling to his skin. Erebor may seem harsh and barren on the surface, but if you knew where to look, it could be as lush as the Shire. The bright spring sun warmed the land, nourishing the ground with melt water. Messy, yes, with a horrible month or so of icy mud, but that was a price Bilbo was willing to pay for the pleasure of watching Erebor come back to life.

Everywhere he looked were new shoots springing forth: grasses and wildflowers, heathers and gorse. Here, in Oin’s long-neglected herb garden, the mint had rampaged beyond all reason, waging war on the brambles that attempted to crowd the derelict earth.

Bilbo had taken it upon himself to fix the problem, clearing space and identifying the struggling descendants of the medicinal herbs that had once filled the beds. It was hard work, and he was fairly sure the dwarves thought he had lost his mind, but at least he could be useful.

A sigh made him smile, and he glanced over to where Thorin sat on a weathered bench nearby. He lounged in the warm sunshine, his head tilted back in appreciation as smoke drifted from the bowl of the pipe that perched beside him.

‘Are you all right?’ Bilbo asked, wincing as Thorin opened one eye to give him a half-hearted glare. Thorin’s injuries had healed, but his terrible battle wounds had demanded their price. It had been a long winter of recovery for the line of Durin, and far from easy.

‘I am well,’ Thorin promised, sitting forward and propping his elbows on his knees. His sleeves, rolled up to expose his forearms, pulled tight over strong muscles, and his face carried a healthy, weathered glow. ‘Thank you.’

‘So, you’re hiding from Balin, then?’

A flicker of guilt crossed Thorin’s brow before being concealed behind a regal mask. ‘Perhaps I merely wished to spend time with you?’

A hot flush of pleasure suffused Bilbo’s cheeks, and he silently scolded himself. He was no tween, blushing at the slightest attention from his crush. He was a grown hobbit and a member of the Company. Not to mention old enough to be above such things.

Wasn’t he?

‘Well, in that case, you can get down here and help me.’ 

He did not expect Thorin to obey him. The crown he wore was a simple band of black metal, but it was a crown all the same. Thorin ruled this mountain, but it seemed he had the humility to settle at Bilbo’s side and survey the bare beds with a puzzled eye.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Playing in the dirt,’ Bilbo joked, laughing when Thorin raised an eyebrow. Honestly, he would not be surprised if that’s what all the dwarves thought. They did not have much affinity for the earth, seeing it as a barrier between them and the treasures within. ‘I’m clearing the beds and planting out the sprouts.’ He gestured to the array of young seedlings behind him, growing in old cups and bowls rescued from Erebor’s wreckage.

‘With a good summer, they’ll be ready for Oin to use in his medicines by the time the autumn comes, and their roots will go deep enough to survive the winter.’ He selected a plant, easing it free from the bowl and separating out the spidery white strands before nestling it in the cradle of the ground. With steady hands, he smoothed the earth into place, pressing it around the stem before sitting back on his heels.

‘That’s all there is to it?’

‘Is banging a pick against a rock all there is to mining?’ Bilbo asked, grinning when Thorin cast a mock glare in his direction. ‘Plants need a lot of care, especially at this stage. It’s no simple task, setting one to rights.’

‘Then why make the effort?’

Thorin’s remark could have seemed sharp and indifferent, but Bilbo found his genuine confusion endearing. ‘This one has its uses,’ he pointed out. ‘Besides, gardens are important to hobbits. They’re what makes a place home.’

Understanding dawned in Thorin’s eyes, as bright as any diamond, underscored by something tender that Bilbo did not dare to try and name. ‘Show me what to do next?’

The soft request stirred Bilbo’s heart. One of the things he so admired about Thorin was his devotion. Anything he believed worth his while received the full power of his attention. He had shown that time and again. 

‘Of course.’

They worked side-by-side, the sun warming their necks and the soil smearing their fingernails. Bilbo talked all the while, explaining about exposure and drainage, sunlight and shade. Thorin took in every word, copying Bilbo’s gentle ministrations to the seedlings. More than once, they would bump shoulders or elbows, but there were no embarrassed apologies. It seemed as if every boundary that had ever built itself between them had vanished, washed away by the flow of Bilbo’s words and the tranquillity of Thorin’s rapt focus.

‘Roots are important,’ Bilbo explained. ‘They not only support the plant and anchor it, but they nourish it as well. If they wither…’ He shrugged, wrinkling his nose.

‘They are the foundations.’ Thorin nodded, moving mud aside with broad, competent hands before picking up one of the sprouts and checking it over. ‘Invisible, but essential. Simple, but strong.’

‘Exactly. You would not rebuild anything in Erebor without first examining the supports, would you?’

Thorin shook his head, a frown folding his brow. ‘Jewels and gold, stone and mortar: such things are what occupies a dwarf.’ He lifted his gaze, his expression distant as he stared across the land. ‘A king must look to more. A mountain’s foundations may be the rock from which it rises, but the roots of a kingdom? That is another matter entirely.’

The subtle strain in Thorin’s voice stirred Bilbo’s sympathy. He would not want Thorin’s job, not for all the gold in the treasury or all the good, green earth in the Shire. There was so much more to reviving Erebor than fixing broken stone. In truth, they could rebuild until the unmaking of the world, and it would still be little but a tomb.

‘The roots of a kingdom are its people,’ Thorin murmured, brushing soil around seedling with such care that Bilbo’s mouth went dry. ‘Without them, Erebor is nothing.’

Rarely did Thorin show his emotions, and never had they been so blatant. Without thinking, Bilbo reached out to cup his shoulder, desperate to ease some of the despair that etched its lines into his face.

‘Erebor has its people. _You_ have its people.’ He gave a quick squeeze, and Thorin’s sensible tunic whispered beneath his palm.

‘But for how long? Soon, they will realise that neither stone nor coin can fill their empty bellies, and that times of plenty are still many years away.’ He gestured out to the plains and crags on Erebor’s doorstep, where life had only just begun to return. ‘In my grandfather’s day, the fields were as gold as the treasury, filled with hardy wheat and grain. The Men of Dale farmed it well.’

Bilbo grimaced, seeing the multitude of problems. The game and foraging around Erebor had got them through the winter – barely. The problem was, crops took time, and preparing for planting on unfarmed terrain took longer still. More to the point, the Men these days had turned their hands to fishing. Would any of them know how to use a plough? And what of the ground? Would the ash of the dragon’s fury nourish it, or would the beast’s evil cause all to fall to rot?

‘What about trade?’ he asked, releasing Thorin’s shoulder and returning to his work, happy to listen as Thorin sorted through the worries that plagued him. ‘We might not have good farmland yet, but we have a treasury full to bursting.’

‘Balin is looking into it, but harsh words make long memories, and my grandfather rarely spoke with kindness. Most may refuse to help us out of spite.’

Bilbo did not argue with that. Personally, he thought Thorin underestimated their neighbours. Even the elves, in their time of greatest need, had given assistance, though admittedly not without a smugness that had many dwarves clenching their teeth.

‘Then offer twice or three times the going rate for goods.’ He tried not to laugh as Thorin made a tight, pained sound. For a race who plundered the earth for its treasures, they were a frugal lot, unwilling to spend more than they must. ‘Merchants will travel further and carry more if the price is right. Besides, it’s not like the treasury will run empty, is it? Also, good trade can do a great deal to soothe any hurt feelings that still linger. Meanwhile, we work on making Erebor as self-sufficient as possible in whatever ways we can.’

He bit his lip, considering what they might do. By rights, the farmland belonged to the Men. It had been worked by their ancestors, and the ground remembered. Erebor’s harsh stone did not offer much in the way of good soil, but there were some foods that flourished on sharp rocks and in dark corners.

‘We?’

Bilbo blinked, realising that Thorin was watching him, his blue eyes warm and his face soft. ‘Of course. I’ll help in any way I can. I’m no good with a chisel, but this?’ He gestured to the earth in front of them, the plants as bright as emeralds upon its black cushion. ‘This, I can do.’

He reached for the last sprout: a cutting of the mint that had waged such violent conquest over the neglected vegetable patch. ‘Here, plant this, bowl and all, and then we’ll go and talk to Balin together. I might have an idea or two.’

Thorin sighed, his lingering frustration evident. Bilbo understood his pain. A great deal of duties rested upon his shoulders, and Thorin would no doubt see any delays as failure. Fear lay at its heart: Bilbo could see that. Fear that his people would leave Erebor, that all they had suffered would be for naught, and that the mountain would still be lost to them.

Fear that he would not be a good king.

Bilbo pursed his lips, pretending to check on the garden as his mind raced. He wanted to ease Thorin’s burden – to lift away the cloak of worry that seemed to enfold his every waking moment, but what could he do? He was just a hobbit!

A sharp inhale interrupted his musings, and he turned back to see what had caused such alarm. Thorin must have pressed too hard, his inner turmoil making him less-than-gentle. Now the main stem of the mint had snapped, leaving it forlorn.

Yet the sight of its wreckage was not as distressing as Thorin’s expression of defeat. Those strong shoulders slumped, and he stared at the damaged foliage as if it were too much to bear.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, his voice hoarse and hurting. ‘I – I didn’t…’

Bilbo shuffled forward on his knees, pinching off the broken stem before placing his hands over Thorin’s where they rested, palm down, at the plant’s base. His skin was chilled beneath Bilbo’s touch, not used to working in cold, clinging mud. ‘It’s mint,’ he said. ‘It’ll take more than that to do it any permanent damage. Even Smaug couldn’t kill it.’

He smiled, ushering more earth close to the wounded herb and patting it down. ‘Every winter, it looks dead as a doornail: like it never existed at all. Two months into spring and you can barely move for the stuff. That’s why you planted it in the bowl. It’ll keep it contained, at least for a little while.

Thorin’s fingertips brushed over his knuckles, and Bilbo looked up. He had not realised how close they were, how intimate. 

‘I haven’t destroyed it?’

Bilbo swallowed, heat rushing down his spine. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but it did not feel as if they were still talking about the mint. How could they be, when Thorin’s eyes shone with such fierce intensity? He looked as if Bilbo’s answer could change the fate of the world and the path of the future all in one fell swoop.

Yet he did not rush him for a response – did not crowd him or retreat as the silence stretched on, filled with memories of that fateful day up on the battlements. By rights, the feelings Bilbo harboured for him should have withered then, never to return. His heart should have hardened; his emotions dismissed as infatuation.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It seemed that, much like the tender young shoots around them, Bilbo’s affection had merely lain dormant, pushed back into the shadows by the vicious frost of Thorin’s rage. Now, after a winter of forgiveness, they flourished anew.

‘You haven’t destroyed anything.’

He could not say who swayed closer first, whether he stretched up or Thorin bent his head, but the warmth of his lips over Bilbo’s felt like dawn after the longest night. Tentative and hesitant, the kiss was sweet in its innocence, almost chaste but for the subtle thrum of tension that ran beneath it.

Bilbo’s body pulsed with awareness, every sense filled with Thorin. The cool air and damp soil faded into insignificance: the world wiped clean in this new and unexpected beginning.

Later, there would be time to talk: soft words spoken of a love that had survived bitter betrayal and the chaos of battle. Later still there would be beads and vows and two crowns, rather than one, but those days were distant yet.

For now, there was only the two of them, kissing in the garden they had planted.

Together.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading <3   
> B xxx
> 
> [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/BDStrike) | [Dreamwidth](https://bdstrike.dreamwidth.org) | [BDStrike.co.uk](http://bdstrike.co.uk) | [Tumblr](http://the-pen-pot.tumblr.com) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/BD_Strike)


End file.
